From AI to the Future of Work: Trends in Planning

Transcript

Anthony Flint: Welcome to the first episode of Season 7 of the Land Matters podcast — hard to believe we’ve been producing this show for that many years. I’m your host, Anthony Flint. Well, planners want to try to figure out what’s coming in the future just like everybody else, but it might be said that those in the planning profession have a special obligation to be alert to all the different future scenarios they can possibly anticipate, given that so much of what they do is, well, plan ahead. That’s why one of the things we really look forward to each year is the trend report by the American Planning Association.

The APA is a professional organization with some 40,000 members helping guide practitioners in their work, whether at city halls or in private consulting or other platforms, all informing the development of the built environment. The trend report is described as a way to prepare for uncertainty and navigate change. It’s a smart compilation of trends that allows communities to stay a step ahead of the issues driving that oftentimes dizzying change. With us today is Petra Hurtado from the American Planning Association to walk us through the 2026 Trend Report, which I should note is curated in partnership with the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy. Petra, welcome to the Land Matters podcast.

Petra Hurtado: Hi, Anthony. Thanks so much for having me.

Anthony Flint: Well, looking at these trends, APA has, over the years, built up a framework of categories that have included housing, climate change, economic development, transportation, work in the workplace, and technology. This past year, APA says, has introduced changes and related uncertainties in almost every area of planning. So much to get into, but let’s dive right in and start with all things digital, the most omnipresent story of our times, it seems, and that’s artificial intelligence. Obviously, AI is being used in so many fields, including government, these days.

At the US Conference of Mayors recently, Boston Mayor Michelle Wu said AI was being used to streamline permitting, so among other things, more housing can be built faster and less expensively. The city of Chattanooga jumped into action, deploying a number of AI pilot use cases, including making Google’s AI assistant Gemini available to all city employees for daily use, training Gemini to help city employees find answers in Chattanooga’s codes and ordinances, and expanding a smart traffic management system across the city.

Tim Kelly, the mayor of Chattanooga, I think, summed it up pretty well when he said the city sought to reframe AI as a “productivity tool that makes our team’s jobs easier.” For him, the punchline is “getting to better solutions faster.” Petra, what are some of the examples of how AI is being used in planning, and what applications might there be in the future?

Petra Hurtado: In our first trend report, which was just in 2022, we were struggling to find these use cases, and we started to talk about AI, but it was still this abstract thing that no one really understood. This year, we had exactly the opposite problem because this year, we actually included a few of these examples of how different municipalities and different planners use AI in their work. It can be using chatbots for customer service. Some places start having their custom-tailored GPTs. There’s also examples of how you can do law enforcement or traffic regulations enforcement, traffic management with different AI tools.

I can really say today, the sky’s the limit. Obviously, what’s on us right now is to monitor and see what are the things that work well, what are some of the issues that we see, and how can we improve some of these tools. I really like the framing that you just mentioned in terms of having it as a productivity tool, because obviously, a lot of people currently also have the fear of getting replaced by some of this. We’re creating a platform that will soon be online on the APA website to showcase all of these different cases. I think in the report, we have about nine this year, just as examples, but there will be more soon.

Anthony Flint: It’s really here to stay. It’s just part of the profession now, is that right? I have a friend who is the chair of a local planning commission, and he was appointed to a task force charged with coming up with an outdoor lighting bylaw. He said he asked ChatGPT for a summary of all the lighting ordinances in the surrounding communities. It was just amazing. It was just instantly packaged up. All the parameters, the feasibility, the issues, the legal challenges they ran into. It’s just the speed and the packaging that’s so remarkable — summing up what others have done and pointing towards what a good ordinance would look like.

Petra Hurtado: I think the important piece is really the human oversight because we do have to look into the content, for example, in this case, that these tools give us, and we can’t just take it and roll with it. We really need to question the things, verify. I don’t think that these tools are in a place yet where they can just really take over and do it all for us, and we can just go on vacation. The human oversight is still very important, and obviously, questioning where does the data come from, what’s actually feeding into the system, where all of this is coming out of.

Anthony Flint: It’s a whole new frontier. Well, let’s turn to some of the other themes, many of them actually related to technology. Let’s start with what’s in store for the future of work and the workplace.

Petra Hurtado: We can stay with AI for a little bit here because that’s really the big fear, as I mentioned earlier, that people fear that they might get replaced by AI because it seems to be developing so fast. When you look into the future, it’s good to look into the past and learn from what happened in the past. When you look at any technology innovation since the Industrial Revolution, there has always been the big fear of global mass unemployment, and it never really happened. The only times when larger numbers of people from one profession lost their jobs was when those jobs really just had one or two tasks, and the task got replaced by a technology.

Looking at planning, I’m not very worried because our work has many different tasks, and especially the human component that for sure won’t be replaced by a machine anytime soon, might actually just gain more importance, and we might be able to get rid of some of the tasks that are repetitive. What we also saw in our research is that, well, first of all, technology also creates new roles, new tasks, new things that we need to learn so we can actually use the technology. We will have to upskill and learn more about how these AI tools work and how we can effectively, and also ethically and responsibly, use them in our work.

In addition to that, we also looked into some questions in terms of when will we reach peak productivity, for example, because you mentioned it, AI can be a productivity tool. At the same time, I think since the 1940s, we’ve been working 40-hour work weeks, and in the meantime, we invented computers, internet, and now AI. At some point, someone might raise the question of when will we work less because of all of these tools that we have.

We saw during COVID some of these four-day work weeks popping up for some organizations and companies. A lot of them actually kept that because it created the same productivity while obviously giving more, a better life-work balance, if you want to call it that. That’s a big question that I think that at some point, society we will have to ask ourselves. Do we want to increase productivity even more, or do we want to increase the quality of life with these tools? A couple of other things that we looked into when it comes to the future of work. One big question right now, also in the context of AI and some of these new technologies, is what’s the future of entry-level jobs?

A lot of the tasks that entry-level planners, but also other professions, are doing are exactly what AI can do. When I think of an entry-level job and planning, a lot of it has to do with putting data into Excel sheets, maybe doing some analysis, doing some basic research. There’s an opportunity to rethink how we work with young people entering the profession and how we can actually leverage their passion, their drive, their technology, literacy, as well as their outside-of-the-box thinking. They come in with very different perspectives. That’s, I think, a big discussion that we all have to have to create meaning for these jobs.

We also looked at where leadership roles might be going in the future. There was a quote from the CEO of Salesforce who said, “The current CEOs are the last generation of CEOs who manage an all-human workforce, because we have AI agents come into our teams, and a leader of tomorrow really will have to understand how they can lead hybrid teams, meaning teams that have human beings as well as AI agents in them.”

Maybe the last point about the future of work, something that we’ve been talking about for the last few years. We see it more and more is skills-based hiring, and really the idea of disconnecting work from job descriptions, acknowledging that the world is getting more and more complex, and legacy job descriptions don’t really connect anymore with what work looks like today. Instead of creating job descriptions, really looking at the different skills and talents of the individual and using that in our work in a productive way that can actually create way more meaning and value than our legacy job descriptions might.

Anthony Flint: The reason this is important is that ultimately it reflects how cities are going to function, and the local economy, and downtowns.

Petra Hurtado: Absolutely. We had some examples from the past where entire communities had the fear of displacement and job loss because they were very focused on one industry. There’s mining towns where, as soon as the mine was closed, the majority of people lost their jobs, or during the Industrial Revolution, when the loom was invented, and then the hand weavers were replaced by that.

Something that we’ve been talking about in economic development forever, I would say, is the diversifying what types of industries you have in your community. Then, on the other hand, what’s really more and more important is really this upskilling. What you learn in school is important, but you need to continuously learn and adjust to the new environment, to the new technologies, to the new ways of doing things. I think that’s equally important to any profession out there.

Anthony Flint: Another category is described as the colliding of online and offline. What did your team mean by that?

Petra Hurtado: Yes. That’s really a very serious topic, and I’m not sure if we talk enough about it. It’s really about how certain conversations and certain behaviors in our online world, in our digital life, if you want to call it that, really impact how we behave offline in our real-world life. We have several examples on that really scattered throughout the report, one of which most people probably have heard about, mass tourism, which really gets results from online influencers that tell us where to travel. Where to eat, what to do, all of that. Obviously, the communities that are affected by that struggle, and that’s a very direct planning issue.

There’s many other items. One of really big concern is, for example, how we deal with violence online. A recent example is when, for example, the CEO of United Healthcare was killed, and there were online platforms that made [the alleged assassin] a hero, essentially. What does that do to our society and how we think about violence? We’ve seen some numbers, some recent numbers, how the comfort with violence has been increasing, especially in the US, and how that really comes out of maybe online being anonymous, being able to say whatever you want to think without being scared that someone might criticize you. Then that translates into our offline behavior, and that’s really a concern.

Another topic that we looked at are things like how people who feel lonely in the real world look for help and maybe companions in the online world. There are AI companions. Some are for friendship. Others use them really as a romantic relationship. There are places now that have laws in place that prohibit marriage with AI companions. Also, AI therapy is something … We’ve seen studies that say that it actually is just as effective as a real therapist. For us, it always comes down to what is that going to do to society, meaning also what does it do to the community that we, as planners, work with?

Then ultimately, the other thing that I see as a big concern there is all of these online interactions also lead to your personal data being collected by some company, whoever it is that owns that platform that you are using for your AI companion, your AI therapist, whatever it is. I see a big issue with data privacy and data protection there because I think most people are not aware of that, and just share extremely personal things with these platforms. In the end, we don’t know what the companies that own these platforms then will do with those. At this point, there are not enough privacy protection laws and data protection laws in place that can actually protect these people.

Anthony Flint: Well, let’s turn to one last tech trend, traffic, public transit, and autonomous vehicles. There’s a lot of interesting reading in the report. Seems to be some promising outcomes at hand, something as simple as managing bus lanes and traffic signals, but also the way robotaxis and Waymo might reduce the need for parking, which can affect the physical landscape of our cities and towns. Also, plenty to worry about as well. What are some of the observations you made about mobility and the future of public transportation?

Petra Hurtado: Personally, I’m very skeptical with the whole autonomous vehicles topic because we’ve been talking about this for so long now, and they’re still not operating the way we thought they would. There are more and more pilots popping up, and obviously, Waymo is operating in some places in the US already. Obviously, there’s still the missing piece of making it really operational in a way that it’s becoming mainstream like other transportation systems. I do think that they could really create an opportunity to close some of the gaps that we have in public transit and elsewhere.

Of course, as long as they’re operated by private companies with the main goal of creating profit, we’ll see how that’s going to go. I know that in previous studies a few years ago, we also looked into what you just mentioned in terms of we might need less parking and traffic might become more efficient because these AVs will just circulate town, and we hop on and get off however it fits. One thing that we looked at is this intersection of transit and autonomous vehicles in terms of, can it really be a means of closing gaps — or will it be a competitor? We also put some future scenarios on that in the report this year.

That obviously also in the context of where public transit is right now. I think most of us know that it’s been struggling in the US since COVID. The numbers of ridership had been going down during COVID and then have not really recovered, just in some places, but in most places they did not. Then, during the Biden administration, there was really a funding boost for these systems, which now, with the current administration, we’ll see where that’s going to go. It’s a very car-centric approach, it seems like, of the current administration. A lot of these communities that thought they could expand their systems or improve the quality are left with uncertainty right now, not knowing where to take the funding from. It’s been not the most positive development in the last few years with transit.

Anthony Flint: That’s a good segue … in terms of funding and the federal government, you always look at the interplay between cities and towns and state, and especially the federal government. This past year, that relationship has certainly grown more contentious. We see diverging priorities, promises to cut off funding for things like rental assistance. Not only that, there’s so much conflict and lawsuits and counter lawsuits and preemption. The federal government calls back the deployment of clean energy wind turbines; the Utah state legislature has a bill that tells Salt Lake City they can’t do complete streets.

At the Lincoln Institute, we recently held a workshop for journalists featuring Nestor Davidson from the Harvard Design School, who makes a cameo in the Trend Report documenting just how bare-knuckled things have become. We don’t have to get into the details of preemption, but it does raise the basic question: Looking at all this, how in the world can cities and towns navigate this more adversarial environment?

Petra Hurtado: That’s the million-dollar question right now. In the report, we look at really many different items related to this, be it policy changes, shifts in funding priorities, also data and misinformation, entire datasets disappearing from the Internet, essentially, as well as community safety. All of that is really impacted right now. What’s important for us to mention is that those are not really trends yet. They’re signals. There’s obviously a shift happening right now, and it’s important to really stay on top of it and be informed about it.

At the same time, it’s also important to look at what else is happening around that. For example, with the data question, there are now private nonprofits that create new databases or use that data that used to be hosted by the federal government and provided otherwise. There’s a lot of movement coming from other places to really provide all of that, but the big question obviously is who can provide the funding that the federal government used to provide. When it comes to preemption, the problem right now is that it’s becoming more and more politicized, and used as a political weapon, if you want to call it that.

Anthony Flint: Finally — and a reminder, there are several more fascinating topics in the trend report, we’re just delving into some of the many topics — but I was interested to read the section about tourism. I want to come back to … you actually started to talk about it earlier. I don’t think I appreciated how much of a cornerstone it is for so many communities around the world. An $11 trillion industry representing 10% of the global economy. Travel and tourism — it’s a good thing generally, but we’ve seen it also creates tensions. Think about Barcelona and this notion of over-tourism and short-term rentals. Can you talk about travel and tourism and what we might see in the future?

Petra Hurtado: There have been many different developments over the last few years and potentially decades in some cases, but we really thought this year we want to take a deeper dive into this topic because it affects a lot of planners. One of the big topics is how social media is impacting tourism. You mentioned over-tourism. A lot of times, that really results from online influencers, people that essentially show up on our social media feeds, be it Instagram, TikTok, or you name it. Share their pictures, their selfies of beautiful places, and tell us, yes, you should travel there, or of restaurants, and tell us, yes, you should eat there.

With the popularity of social media and really the way it influences what we do, it created these masses of tourism that go to the places that are being talked about. That’s one big thing. In addition to that, there’s obviously more and more places also that really hire these influencers to specifically advertise their places. In a lot of cases, and we mentioned some examples from Italy, in the report, for example, where smaller villages just can’t handle the numbers of tourism anymore, and so it’s really becoming a problem, and some places are getting more and more creative on how to limit the numbers of tourists and otherwise .. of course, for many of these places, it’s also an important economy and really the main driver of their economy.

Then the other thing, looking back over the last few years, what has impacted tourism a lot are things like short-term rentals, Airbnb, those platforms that allow now private people to rent out a room or the place that they live in. It’s become a problem in two ways. On the one hand, it obviously creates more places for tourists to come and stay, but it also creates an issue with the housing market in those places, really raising the housing prices. You mentioned Barcelona. That’s obviously one of the examples where that is really a big issue right now because the locals can’t afford to live there anymore, and there’s less and less places available for rent because they all become short-term rentals.

Anthony Flint: All right. Well, like I said, we could go on, but that was a pretty good sampling of what’s in the report. Petra Hurtado, thank you for taking this whirlwind tour of all the trends that we’re all going to encounter in the planning profession and beyond.

Petra Hurtado: Yes, thank you so much for having me, and yes, would really recommend to all the listeners to take a look.

Anthony Flint: You can find the 2026 Trend Report at planning.org/foresight. APA’s social media handle is @APA_planning. There’s also a recorded webinar that is at that website. It’s very nicely done, where different folks from the team put the spotlight on these various topics. You can also find it at the American Planning Association’s YouTube channel. Pretty easy to find. Just search for it. I guess now you can just ask Gemini! The Lincoln Institute website is lincolninst.edu, and our social media handle is @landpolicy. Please go ahead and rate, share, and subscribe to the Land Matters podcast. For now, I’m Anthony Flint signing off, until next time.